The baby crash, that women are not producing enough babies to keep populations from verging to a long-term crash, has been discussed as a problem in the West since the late 1960s. However now, with the economic development of East Asia, it has emerged as a problem for those societies as well. Japan was the first to be hit by this issue, but now communist China, Taiwan and South Korea, wealthy nations, are facing the same problem of the crash of births. Thus, Taiwan has spent over $ 3 billion to increase the birth rate, doing all the things that academics writing about this topic have canvassed as “solutions,” such as paid parental leave, tax breaks, more childcare centres, but none of this is working. All these measures have been tried in other affluent countries and still women do not want to have children, or enough children. According to Professor Trent MacNamara, “Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments have struggled to find policies that produce sustained bumps in fertility.” “If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.” The recent history of these failed policies is detailed in the extract below.
While no doubt the present economic conditions, the housing crisis and cost of living crisis are contemporary factors which will lower birth rates even more than in more prosperous time, the demographic facts are that birth rates have fallen beginning in relatively good times, so adverse economic conditions cannot be a complete explanation of the decline of births. The short of the long is that the affluence of modernity has created “better” things for women to do with their time.